All summer long, I knew it was coming. Pre-school. He knows his alphabet, he is kind, and he holds his crayon like a gorilla trying to gracefully paint an intricate picture.
It’s just not working.
I know I should’ve done more fine motor activities with him. Now I’m feeling behind and we really have to get focused. Where to start?
What Are Fine Motor Skills?
Fine motor skills involve the small muscles in the body that allow your child to write, draw, color, button, zip, and tie. We use fine motor skills anytime we grasp a small object and manipulate it.
Strong fine motor skills allow your child to complete simple self-help tasks that boost their confidence and self-esteem.
Why is Practicing Fine Motor Skills Important?
Fine motor skills are something I never thought about before I taught kindergarten. I just figured they were developed naturally, I had no idea what a growing problem they were. Over the past few years, we have seen a massive decline in children’s fine motor skills.
Research shows that fine motor skills are a huge predictor of academic success. Children with more developed motor skills are more prepared to be successful in activities such as writing, cutting, and coloring.
Screen time can have an enormous impact on fine motor skills. Children are spending more time in front of the tv, on phones or i-pads, or playing video games and their hands aren’t strong enough to write, draw, or use scissors.
So, how can we fix it? There are many simple activities you can do using items you already have at home that will strengthen your child’s fine motor skills.
Simple Fine Motor Activities You Can Do At Home for 0-2 Year Olds
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- Limit Screen Time: The American Association of Pediatrics recommends no screen time for children under 2. Reading, letting them explore, and learn to manipulate items with their hands are all more beneficial than watching even “educational” shows or apps.
- Play-Doh: Play-Doh is great for strengthening your hands. Roll, squeeze, cut, and building are great activities for little fingers.
- Color: There’s no better way to get better at controlling crayons, colored pencils, and markers than using them. Consider allowing your children to draw open endedly instead of handing them a coloring book. This will boost their imagination and creativity.
- Cut: Children can start using (child-safe) scissors at 2. First, they will just make snips on the edge of the paper, next they can start cutting along a line that you draw on a paper. When they are ready, have them cut zig-zag lines and curvy lines or circles.
- Eye Dropper: We use these in the bath. I call out a letter and my child uses the eyedropper to squirt the foam letter with water.
- Scooping: Kids love scooping and dumping. Scooping and dumping are great practice for little hands.
- Pom Poms: Putting pom poms in a dry 2-liter bottle or another bottle with a small opening helps with hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills.
- Stacking Blocks: Stacking blocks develop important hand-eye coordination skills.
Simple Fine Motor Activities You Can Do At Home for 3-5 Year Olds
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- Tear Paper: Tearing paper strengthens the muscles in little fingers, and gives lots of practice manipulating small objects.
- Trace: Draw a line with a thick marker and have your child trace it. You can work on numbers, letters, shapes, or silly lines.
- Beads: String beads on a shoelace or pipe cleaner. Using letter beads, have your child spell their name and any sight words they may know. They can also make patterns using pony beads.
- Perler Beads: We thought we were just having fun and making cool magnets when we were kids using Perler beads. Little did we know, we were actually refining our fine motor skills.
- Name Practice: There are endless possibilities to work on your child’s fine motor skills using their name.
- Write their name in thick, black marker and have them trace it. They can trace with a pencil, crayon or marker. Put this in a page protector and have them use a dry erase marker to trace to make it reusable.
- Write their name in bubble letters and have them paint or watercolor the letters.
- Write their name in thick, black marker and have your child tear paper in little pieces. Your child will glue the little pieces of paper to the lines of their name. They could even make a pattern with the colors they are using.
- Wikki Stix: I love wiki stix. You can build shapes, 3D shapes, use them to make letters, numbers, the possibilities are endless.
- Legos: What a great way for children to use their imagination while improving their fine motor skills.
- Sneaky, Snacky Squirrel Game: My kindergartners (and my 3-year-old) love this game. Games are not only good for fine motor skills, but are great for social skills, turn taking, and color recognition.
- Playfoam: Kindergartners love this. A new twist on play-doh that gets them manipulating, squeezing and creating using their imagination.
Sensory Bins
Sensory Bins are plastic bins filled with a filler carefully selected to stimulate the senses, small items for your child to manipulate, and a tool to strengthen fine motor skills. These bins allow your child to explore different textures and manipulate different items all while building imagination, problem-solving, exploration skills, and fine motor skills.
My favorite sensory bins have an academic twist to them as well. Children learn best when they learn through play.
The things you can do with sensory bins are endless. For the younger child who may still put small objects in his or her mouth, you can also make sensory bags.
Fine Motor Tools
These are our favorite, inexpensive fine motor tools we use throughout our daily activities.
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- We love this fine motor set from Learning Resources. The bubble tongs are a great way to practice scissor skills and the eyedropper is a fun toy for the bath. Tweezers and the handy scooper are a good way to practice pinching and strengthening the muscles in little fingers.
- These tripod grasp tweezers are a great way to practice correct pencil grip.
- Here’s another great set of jumbo tweezers. These are made of heavy plastic, so they take some strength to use. Great for strengthening muscles in little hands.
- This is a sneaky way to strengthen hand muscles. Children love to punch paper, and they won’t realize they are working on their skills.
It’s important to work on your child’s fine motor skills. Children who don’t have strong fine motor skills in kindergarten end up getting frustrated and falling behind while attempting to keep up with kindergarten work.
I took on the task of trying to make my gorilla a little more graceful, so I brought out some of my fine motor baskets from when I taught kindergarten. We started tracing shapes, playing with play-doh more, and drawing almost daily. I saw an improvement in his ability to control his marker. We still have a ways to go, but it’s a start!
Want More?
If you liked this, you’ll love:
The 3 Important Developmental Stages of Drawing in Children
Why is Pincer Grasp Important?
Tracing Shapes | Why it’s Important and How to Practice
Your Turn!
There are limitless, simple ways you can work on fine motor skills with your child throughout a typical day. What’s your favorite way to strengthen fine motor skills?